The UFC is not getting behind any of their champions, instead promoting contenders

[Siesta]

We saw this in the Ngannou vs Stipe fight. The promos were 80% Ngannou and how he's a wrecking force and hits as hard as a Ford truck or something. Stipe was neglected and he said he wasn't bothered by this, but he clearly was.

In the lead up to Ronda vs Nunes, 100% of the promos were about Ronda, which is understandable because of her history. But I don't know if they even showed Amanda's face in any of the promos. Amanda said she wasn't bothered by this, but she clearly was when after the fight she said "Who gives a shit about Ronda Rousey."

UFC were hyping the heck out of Till. So much to the point where I forgot that Woodley was an established champ. I wasn't fooled by the Ngannou hype, but I was by Till. I thought Till would beat him handily and that him becoming champ was a forgone conclusion. Woodley gets hate for seeming to complain a lot, but he's right, UFC has done absolutely nothing to promote him.

TJ vs Cody. TJ is perhaps the most complete MMA fighter of his generation who's looked nearly flawless in all his fights except for the Cruz fight. Cody was promoted as a fresh young face with a magnetic personality who would represent the UFC well as a champ. TJ destroyed him worse than the first fight.

Cyborg is perhaps the greatest female fighter of all time who brings it every fight. Her fights are a spectacle. Sometimes I forget that she's still fighting. Give her some worthy opponents and promote her properly.

What the fuck is WME doing?

So what...

 

[West Linn]

So what...

hur dur hur

 

[Fedor>Cain]

how was Stipe the most boring HW champ since Tim Sylvia?

6 of his last 7 fights have ended in KO's, 5 of which were in the 1st rd, including his loss to DC.

it amazes me how fans are biased towards fighters even when EVERYTHING points to the opposite.

Boring personality. You can be the most boring ass fighter on the roster and get paid if people like you.

Stipe didn't even want to promote himself for fucks sake.

It amazes me that people are so biased towards their favorite fighters that they think that they should all be draws. Stipe sounds like a 70 grandma who smokes when he talks. You can't promote that shit.

He is just a boring average guy. Average champ too. Beat up on old fighters. Cormier wrecked him in less than a round coming up from a lower class.

 

[XxanaxX]

They’ll work harder for less money and take longer to bitch about inadequate pay.

I wish cooperations would stop being so greedy, sacrificing quality to squeeze every dime out of their employees and keep get share-holders happy. At some point, those stupid bar graphs will stop showing upward growth and tank.

 

[CalvilloRay]

Till is a decision artist that they were hyping as a KO artist cuz of the Cerrone fight and his early career knocking out bums in Brazil, one look at his record and it was clear he wasn’t ready for that title shot

 

[lagofala]

When DJ was champ, they sure did a terrible job of promoting his contenders.

UFC has to promote both.

 

[XxanaxX]

Boring personality. You can be the most boring ass fighter on the roster and get paid if people like you.

Stipe didn't even want to promote himself for fucks sake.

It amazes me that people are so biased towards their favorite fighters that they think that they should all be draws. Stipe sounds like a 70 grandma who smokes when he talks. You can't promote that shit.

He is just a boring average guy. Average champ too. Beat up on old fighters. Cormier wrecked him in less than a round coming up from a lower class.

Not all of us watch for the TMZ bullshit and stupid media promotion. It’s enough for the purists among us to watch a good fighter put on good fights and let their fists do the talking without the sports entertainment angle.

I know most wont share that sentiment, but we’re at a time in the sport where certain people can’t be bothered to fight and hold up dvisions.

Get in there, fight hard and do your job.

 

[Pain4Pain]

I think it would be cool if they made a commercial of all the champions of each division and promoted them in one big commercial or something possibly before their respective fights

HW/LHW DC - Olympian, father, promote him as the respectful father figure/man that gets the job done

MW - Whittaker is harder to promote, but they can market him to the NZ/Aus crowd given that Hunto is on his way out in the UFC

WW - Woodley can be promoted somewhat like Colin, how he stands up for race and came from humble beginnings and works hard to earn where he is at. Woodley is a respectful dude.

LW - Khabib - Spur the Russian fans, though I doubt he will ever reach a Fedor-esque reputation

FW - Both Holloway and Ortega speak English, though I find Ortega is more promotable b/c he grew up in the ghetto and can also speak Spanish.

BW - TJ The ever evolving fighter, family man, he likes to hunting and shit too so they can possibly promote that. He really has a cool matrix style they can focus on

FLYW - Cejudo is a goddamn olympian and mexican american who CAN speak Spanish. Nuff said


WFW - Cyborg is a goddamn beast in the UFC. She can definitely be promoted in Brazil, but her looks don't do her justice

WBW - Nunes, just as Cyborg, not as dominant, but not the most easy to promote either

WFLY - Not much to do w/ Nico, I feel like she helps minorities stand up for their cause and she was really cool on embedded

WSW - Rose is goddamn cute and she can be used to encourage other young pretty women, kind of like Ronda. Kind of sad she has emotional issues though.

 

[FrankieNYC]

A lot of great post ITT
great read & debate from both sides
good stuff, esp. @AimedWithV

 

[g*r*b]

Boring personality. You can be the most boring ass fighter on the roster and get paid if people like you.

Stipe didn't even want to promote himself for fucks sake.

It amazes me that people are so biased towards their favorite fighters that they think that they should all be draws. Stipe sounds like a 70 grandma who smokes when he talks. You can't promote that shit.

He is just a boring average guy. Average champ too. Beat up on old fighters. Cormier wrecked him in less than a round coming up from a lower class.

When you write "people are so biased towards their favorite fighters" in your argument against Stipe, you're acknowledging that Stipe is some people's favorite fighter. Which argues that he has some kind of charm that draws their attention, no? It may not be the flashy sort that quickly catches the eye (or ear) and thus attracts many quickly with relative ease, but it's solid and strangely endearing once you get to know it better.

Now, Stipe may not be fond of self-promotion, but he's done slews of personal appearances, interviews, UFC fan events etc; it's not like he refuses to do it. But unfortunately he's not glib, so your high-level media appearances aren't best suited for him. Which is precisely why a proper promotion from the company could be so useful: let them be the spokesman who explains to us why this guy is one you should pay heed to. And people will generally keep paying heed to a high output striker with plenty of (T)KOs in his highlight reel. But the UFC are only interested in selling those who sell themselves, because it's the easiest thing to do. They'll pick up a few gold nuggets washed up by a stream but never even think of digging a mine, no matter how rich the lode could be.

 

[Pancake Sprawl]

Boring personality. You can be the most boring ass fighter on the roster and get paid if people like you.

Stipe didn't even want to promote himself for fucks sake.

It amazes me that people are so biased towards their favorite fighters that they think that they should all be draws. Stipe sounds like a 70 grandma who smokes when he talks. You can't promote that shit.

He is just a boring average guy. Average champ too. Beat up on old fighters. Cormier wrecked him in less than a round coming up from a lower class.

Stipe isn't my favorite fighter so don't try to play that shit.

all i'm doing is pointing out how retarded it is that you think he's "boring" because he's not a big talker. he's a fighter, not a fuckin talk show host. him having more defenses than any other HW champion ever should make him marketable, him knocking out most of the guys he fought in the past several years should make him marketable.

UFC is the PROMOTION, Dana White is the PROMOTER, Stipe is the FIGHTER. Stipe fights, UFC and Dana promotes. not the other way around.

i never once said Stipe should be a top draw, but he definitely deserved more promotion, by the PROMOTION that he works for.

explain to me what was so great about Ngannou that he deserved all the promotion over Stipe during the build up to their fight? because of his riveting shit talking right? LOL the guy can barely speak English, so tell me again, how was he so deserving of the big promo push?

the answer is: HE WASN'T.

Ngannou got the push because he ....KO'd Arlovski and Overeem? LOL who hasn't KO'd those guys? not to mention the fact that Stipe knocked both of those guys out before Ngannou.

we all know, Ngannou got the push because he looks like a movie villain's henchman and they wanted Stipe out of there.

the other takeaway here is, that you said you need a great personality to get the big push from UFC, but Ngannou's push proves the exact OPPOSITE. Ngannou has an even more boring personality than Stipe, and hasn't really done anything special besides beat guys Stipe already had beaten.

 

[tru3f4n]

Ngannou was destroying people and Till had just stopped Cowboy as well as decisioning Wonderboy. The hype was deserved, they just got beat

he beat an over the hill lw and got a hometown dec the hype was BS.

 

[magicmarker]

Back in the day they absolutely hyped up the champion. Couture got pushed. Chuck Liddell absolutely got a big push as a champion. The ladies used to be promoted when they were the champion. Ronda got a massive push as champion in addition to her own promoting. Holly was pushed as champion. Tate was pushed as champ. Joanna also seemed to be promoted heavily. Altogether when you look at it all across a long time it seems very inconsistent as far as who they get behind and who they don’t, and the current trend is to not promote the champion much, if any. Which is a shame because they’re are some very marketable champions/former champions in the current era but casuals don’t know anything about them. At least not in a way they feel connected to them, by finding commonality, in who they are as people.

 

[screaminleeman]

We saw this in the Ngannou vs Stipe fight. The promos were 80% Ngannou and how he's a wrecking force and hits as hard as a Ford truck or something. Stipe was neglected and he said he wasn't bothered by this, but he clearly was.

What the fuck is WME doing?

Stipe was promoted as the HW GOAT and was guaranteed to stomp a mudhole in the portly LHW moving up to HW to face him as an opponent for his LONGEST CONSECUTIVE DEFENDED HW title.

I bet Stipe wishes that they had held true to form and promoted it as if D.C. was going to push this chump's teeth down his throat like Ngannaou! Maybe if neglected, he would say he wasn't bothered and actually show up with a mad-on to fight!

 

[PapaBherd]

I think your priorities are in the wrong place.

We can agree Woodley and Stipe are not a great selling champions, right?

How much are all three parties going to gain by polishing that turd over and over?

Like you said, you bit into the Till job. It was the real selling point of this fight. The selling point wasn't another Woodley/Stipe fight. It was the possibility of something new that was attractive.

They never actually got behind them for anyone to say that for a fact. Also, it's not a zero sum game. Building your contenders(which indirectly benefits champs) doesn't mean overlooking the titleholders.

 

[Lemmy Caution]

Why in the fuck would wme waste money promoting boring ass Stipe? No casual fans are ever going to tune in to watch guy.

Was pretty obvious he was on borrowed time because considering how much trouble he was usually in during his fights. Oh, and because HW's knock each other out like crazy.

Really? There are tons of ways you can promote a guy. If you have an everyguy, promote him as that. The point of promoting is to tell people you have a great product. The job of the promoter is to get people interested.

Dana has the easiest job in human history. No matter who wins the fight, the UFC wins. Yet Dana insists on looking at it as a win-lose proposition and put all his eggs in one basket. He plays a game rigged so he cannot possibly lose and still lose. Basically, his only job is to not stick his hand in the pot of bubbling tomato sauce. Yet he insists on doing it, over and over.

 

[IDGETKTFO]

Why would they want to promote the champion more then the contender? If you want people to buy a PPV, you want the viewers to think the contender has a legit chance to beat the champion, otherwise, whats the point of watching/buying. You fanboys are too fucking blind and stupid to realize this.

 

[PapaBherd]

Boring personality. You can be the most boring ass fighter on the roster and get paid if people like you.

Stipe didn't even want to promote himself for fucks sake.

It amazes me that people are so biased towards their favorite fighters that they think that they should all be draws. Stipe sounds like a 70 grandma who smokes when he talks. You can't promote that shit.

He is just a boring average guy. Average champ too. Beat up on old fighters. Cormier wrecked him in less than a round coming up from a lower class.

You don't have to like something in order for you to do it. Also, fight promotion isn't just interviews and sound bite -- a lot of it has to do with how stories are woven by the promotion. Unfortunately for us, the UFC's storytelling technique is heavy-handed and formulaic, and with the amount of money they are about to make with ESPN, that isn't going to change.

 

[Fedor>Cain]

Not all of us watch for the TMZ bullshit and stupid media promotion. It’s enough for the purists among us to watch a good fighter put on good fights and let their fists do the talking without the sports entertainment angle.

I know most wont share that sentiment, but we’re at a time in the sport where certain people can’t be bothered to fight and hold up dvisions.

Get in there, fight hard and do your job.

I'm with you, unfortunately, WME doesn't care about us. The care about the people we hate.

 

[Fedor>Cain]

When you write "people are so biased towards their favorite fighters" in your argument against Stipe, you're acknowledging that Stipe is some people's favorite fighter. Which argues that he has some kind of charm that draws their attention, no? It may not be the flashy sort that quickly catches the eye (or ear) and thus attracts many quickly with relative ease, but it's solid and strangely endearing once you get to know it better.

Now, Stipe may not be fond of self-promotion, but he's done slews of personal appearances, interviews, UFC fan events etc; it's not like he refuses to do it. But unfortunately he's not glib, so your high-level media appearances aren't best suited for him. Which is precisely why a proper promotion from the company could be so useful: let them be the spokesman who explains to us why this guy is one you should pay heed to. And people will generally keep paying heed to a high output striker with plenty of (T)KOs in his highlight reel. But the UFC are only interested in selling those who sell themselves, because it's the easiest thing to do. They'll pick up a few gold nuggets washed up by a stream but never even think of digging a mine, no matter how rich the lode could be.

He's some people's favorite fighter...sure...but those people are MMA fans who are gonna watch whether wme sinks promotion money or not.

Wme is after a casual auduience. MMA fans that love fighters like Stipe are always gonna be there.